writing-prompt-s:

You turn on the radio one morning to find another one of those Rap songs where every 4th word is a swear. Naturally the Radio bleeps it out, but you realize that it sounds familiar. You realize that the rappers are speaking in Morse code.

 

dailylexiconic:

Your eyes widen as you swerve over onto the shoulder of the expressway, nearly hitting a Jeep Cherokee in the process. It didn’t matter to you. Frantically searching the glove compartment, the backseat, and your purse, you finally find a small notepad and a pen with a low ink cartridge. You listen closely to the radio, and begin to scribble down as much as you can. You realize it was merely a pattern.

— -. . / – .– — / – .– — / ..-. .. ..-. – -.–

Unfortunately for you, you aren’t very well versed in translating Morse code, merely recognizing it. You reach into your purse to grab your phone, but after a moment of searching, you realize you had left it at home before you left for work. “God damnit,” you mutter. You’re more than halfway to your office, and you’re already running late due to the fact that that you decided to follow some whim and jot down some cryptic message from a provocative rapper. Concluding that it would probably be best for you to mosey to work, you pull back onto the expressway and try to make it to work on time.

Upon arriving at work, you ask any coworker in sight if they know Morse code. Nobody seems to, and some don’t even know what Morse code is. You slump your shoulders in disappointment and head over to your desk, when suddenly, the quiet, mouse-like secretary clears her throat and says, “Excuse me, I know Morse code!”

You turn around with the same wide eyes as before. “You do!?” you ask vigorous excitement, which seems to startle the young woman.

“Yes,” she says, “when I was younger, I planned on joining the navy, so I taught it to myself.” You feel a bit sorry for her, that she wound up as a mere secretary instead of a naval officer, but that feeling of pity didn’t stop you from being grateful for the lucky coincidence of her knowing Morse code. You show her the pattern.

— -. . / – .– — / – .– — / ..-. .. ..-. – -.–

“That’s all there is?” she asks, furrowing her brow.

“Yeah,” you shrugged, “it just kept repeating that over and over again. What does it say?”

“One, two, two, fifty.”

Your heart sinks a little. “What is that? What does that mean, is it like a phone number or house address or something?”

The secretary shrugs. “I’m really sorry, I don’t know. It’s too short to be a phone number, but beyond deciphering it, I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

You nod slowly, and though you understand, you are still not at all satisfied. You go to sit at your desk. 1 2 2 50. The sequence plays over and over in your head all day, and needless to say, your curiosity an wonderment got the best of you. It was not a very productive work day.

You head home, and the same damned song plays on the radio. You shake your head as if that would make the song stop, then decide to plug 12250 into your GPS to see if there are any autofill results. None. You become increasingly frustrated.

When you get home, your daughter is sitting at the kitchen table, working on homework. She runs up to you and gives you a big hug, and asks about your day at work. You put on a fake smile and sigh. “Interesting,” you say— no doubt sugarcoating the intense excitement, disappointment, and confusion.

“Will you help me with my homework? I have to memorize something for my history class tomorrow.”

“Of course, doll! What are you memorizing?”

She hands you a laminated sheet of paper. “Roman numerals!”

You glance over the page, your eyes quickly darting from one, to two, to fifty.

It dawns on you. You’d recognize this pattern anywhere.

I II II L

 

xakumi:

MOTHERFUCKER

 

qlassnebulae:

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME

 

gehayi:

For those like me who read this and who had no fucking clue what the point was, here is the explanation. (Apparently you have to know a certain meme well for this to make sense.)

 

kai-skai:

@itsbenedict I was surprised this wasn’t your post (or at least your reblog)

 

itsbenedict:

well that is MAYBE because i have a shred of COMMON DECENCY


Tags:

#storytime #oh my god #loss.jpg

love-this-pic-dot-com:

Morse Code A Visual Guide

 

coyotecomforts:

sammiwolfe important to our lives lol XD

 

sammiwolfe:

Oh oh my god now Morse code actually makes SENSE when you lay it out like that

 

eurotrottest:

Awesome!!

 

ironykins:

tumblr_inline_ocki6evx8r1sfnyf2_540

This is also nice, if you want to decode morse code quickly. 

 

goldendragon22:

that avl tree though

 

ironykins:

That’s not a coincidence! Naturally, it’s less work to transmit shorter sequences of dots and dashes, so we try to use up all the shorter sequences first. Basically, this means that we fill in all the branches at one level of this tree before moving onto the next. The result is a perfectly balanced decoding tree. 

The placement of the letters is also far from arbitrary. Here are all the letters in English ordered from most common to least common: 

ETAOINSRHLDCUMFPGWYBVKXJQZ

Notice something? The shortest morse code sequences were assigned to the most common letters. This makes the common letters easier to remember, and makes messages as short as possible in the average case.

Numbers are sort of an exception to this. All numerical symbols are encoded with 5 dots and dashes. But there’s a pretty clear pattern to these as well. 

1 = .—-

2 = ..—

3 = …–

4 = ….-

5 = …..

6 = -….

7 = –…

8 = —..

9 = —-.

0 = —–

So if the listener hears a series of 5 dots and dashes, they immediately know it’s a number. To decode it, they count the number of dashes. If the dashes came before the dots, the number is 5 + the number of dashes. Otherwise, the number is 5 – the number of dashes. 

Morse Code is neat.


Tags:

#Morse code #the more you know #things I have vague aspirations to learn someday #but suspect I will always have higher-priority things to do